The Verdict

Published by ONE MORE CHAPTER

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Olivia Isaac-Henry 2019

Cover Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover Photographs © Shutterstock.com

Olivia Isaac-Henry asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © August 2019; ISBN: 9780008317768

Version: 2019-07-19

For Keith

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1: 2017 – Central London

Chapter 2: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 3: 2017 – Central London

Chapter 4: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 5: 2017 – Central London

Chapter 6: 1994 – Archway, London

Chapter 7: 2017 – Archway, London

Chapter 8: 1995 – Archway, London

Chapter 9: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 10: 2017 – Archway, London

Chapter 11: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 12: 2017 – Archway, London

Chapter 13: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 14: 2017 – Archway, London

Chapter 15: 1995 – Archway, London

Chapter 16: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 17: 2017 – Archway, London

Chapter 18: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 19: 2017 – Maida Vale, London

Chapter 20: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 21: 2017 – Central London

Chapter 22: 2001 – Kingston upon Thames

Chapter 23: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 24: 2017 – Guildford Police Station

Chapter 25: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 26: 2017 – Guildford Police Station

Chapter 27: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 28: 2017 – Guildford Police Station

Chapter 29: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 30: 2017 – Guildford Police Station

Chapter 31: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 32: 2018 – Bronzefield

Chapter 33: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 34: 2018 – Bronzefield

Chapter 35: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 36: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 37: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 38: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 39: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 40: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 41: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 42: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 43: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 44: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 45: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 46: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 47: 1995 – Archway, London

Chapter 48: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 49: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 50: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 51: 2017 – Dulwich, London

Chapter 52: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 53: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 54: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 55: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 56: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 57: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 58: 2017 – Dulwich, London

Chapter 59: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 60: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 61: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 62: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 63: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 64: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 65: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court

Chapter 66: 1994 – Guildford

Chapter 67: 1995 – Flaxley, Worcestershire

Chapter 68: 2019 – Guildford

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

Prologue

Stumbling down the hill, filthy and too exhausted to even lift the shovels dragging behind them, they looked up to see a red glow starting to stretch along the ridge above. Dawn was breaking.

‘Hurry up,’ he said.

At the bottom of the hill, she managed to haul herself over the stile, only to tumble down the slope on the other side and fall face down in the road, her fingernails bloodstained, her mouth and nose clogged with dirt. She could have fallen asleep there and then, not caring if she were seen.

A hand reached under her armpit and hauled her to her feet.

‘Keep moving.’

What was the point in moving or any attempt at concealment? He wouldn’t lie buried for ever. Someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week or next year, someone would find him.

Chapter 1

2017 – Central London

It feels like centuries since I was young. I look around my office; Miranda is scrolling through Tinder while drinking a coffee. Her lithe body falls across a hard-backed wooden chair as if it were a hammock.

Paulo wears mustard-coloured jeans, his feet up on the desk, the soles of his boots splayed towards me. The urge to kick them off becomes so great, I have to look away.

‘Yeah, I know, yeah,’ he drones into his phone, too loud and irritating to tune out.

What right do they have to youth? They do not value it. They will waste it, as I did mine, and one day wake up, middle-aged, in an office full of people who believe them to be obsolete, an irrelevance. They will stare at the calendar and not believe the year – how did we reach 2017 so quickly? And then the day, Wednesday – how many hours until the weekend?

I used to wonder what these millennials thought about me, then I realised, I’m invisible, they don’t think about me. On the first day Miranda made some polite enquiries. I tried to ignore her lisp as she asked, ‘Are you married, single?’

‘Separated,’ I say.

‘So, what you gonna do about it?’ she asked.

‘About what?’

‘Being single?’

‘Nothing,’ I told her.

She gave me an odd look.

‘Well, Jonathan’s going to be on the desk next to you,’ she said. ‘It’s easier if you’re together.’

Easier because we’re around the same age? I’m sure Jonathan would balk at the idea. He wears slim-fit maroon trousers and goes sockless in slip-on shoes, believing he’s not so different from the kids around us. At least I’m not suffering under that delusion.

Since that first day, Miranda’s barely spoken to me. And whenever I ask what she and other members of the team are laughing about in the corner, she says, nothing, and slopes off, like a kid caught cutting class.

She chats to Jonathan, despite his age, but then he is her boss. Today she’s telling him about her cousin’s upcoming trip to Vietnam.

‘My son was there in his gap year – loved it,’ Jonathan says. ‘But Cambodia’s more interesting. Took a trip out there a few years ago – Angkor Wat – amazing.’

Bless Jonathan. If you’ve been to the moon, he’s been there twice.

‘My cousin’s going to be working, not just travelling,’ Miranda says.

‘I suppose your son’s at that age now, Julia,’ Jonathan says.

He catches me off guard. I’m unused to being included in conversations.

‘Sam’s only seventeen, still doing A levels – not sure what he wants to do afterwards,’ I say.

‘Uni, gap year?’

‘Still undecided.’

‘You need to look into it now,’ Jonathan says. ‘At least a year in advance. Have a chat with him. Are you close?’

You’re a whore. I hate you.

‘He’s growing up. Doesn’t need his mum so much these days.’

‘You always need your mum,’ Miranda says. ‘I’m twenty-five and I still talk to mine every day.’

I wish you were dead.

‘I think you need some independence, before you become close again,’ I say.

‘That’s difficult these days,’ Miranda says. ‘Because no one can afford to leave home. I only managed it because I found this property guardian job.’

Jonathan turns the conversation back to his son and the flat he’s helping him to buy. I make a coffee and slip out of the door. No one notices.

Outside, it’s a bright day, with only a hint of rain in the air. A man in a padded jacket enters the Sensuous Bean next door, my co-workers’ preferred coffee shop. Sometimes they take their laptops and work in there. My café is the green in the square of Georgian houses behind the main road. A small patch of grass with benches provides fresh air and somewhere to sit and drink. The tall poplars surrounding it are turning to rust in the early October chill. Their leaves swirl around the square, hugging its corners and clogging its drains. A toddler jumps into a great pile of them, kicking whorls into the air and giggling with glee. He reminds me of Sam at that age, in his red jacket with the hood falling back from his head.

Loitering by the bin is a man dressed entirely in khaki. He’s constantly hanging about the square, a roll-up wedged between his forefingers. I’ve always suspected he’s a drug dealer. People come and stand and talk to him for half a minute or so, money changes hands, and the people wander off. It all seems very friendly, not how I imagined the trade to be carried out, with knives and Rottweilers. I’ve spent so many coffee breaks here, khaki man and I are now on nodding terms.

Today, a few workmen, in thick boots and high-vis jackets, are sitting around chatting and drinking tea from polystyrene cups. One of them, who hasn’t bothered to take off his hard hat, is chatting to a man in mustard-coloured jeans. I do a double take and realise it’s Paulo from the office. He turns and sees me, gives me a nervous smile and looks a little embarrassed. Is the man in the hard hat Paulo’s bit of rough? Not everything’s about sex, my mother, Audrey, always tells me. She’s right, not everything, but it’s what most things boil down to. That and greed.

A bleep from my phone distracts me. I check straight away, in case it’s Sam.

Jules, we’re back! Come over tomorrow and we’ll talk. XXX

My oldest friend, Pearl, is the only person I can forgive for not being Sam, but I wish he’d contact me. Missing him has become a physical ache. I’ll text her back later.

I’m walking to the next free bench when my phone beeps again. An unknown number this time, probably informing me I’ve been mis-sold PPI – whatever that is.

I open the message. I must have misread it. I stare at the phone and force my eyes to focus. I read it again.

It’s a photo link to a news website, a picture of lush, rolling hills, dotted with clumps of beech trees. Clouds cross a bright sky, casting shadows over the dells and copses. Above the photo is a headline: Surrey University Students Discover Body Buried on North Downs.

My throat constricts. Black spots start to float in front of my eyes. The square, its leaves, its inhabitants disappear. I drop the coffee.

Chapter 2

1994 – Guildford

Julia stood outside Guildford train station, twisting a flimsy A–Z in her hands and trying to orientate herself towards the six locations, ringed in red biro, where she’d arranged viewings. Her two criteria were that the room must be clean and close to the train station. Guildford was to be a place of work only, the room she sought somewhere to rest her head. Her life would be in London. At weekends, she’d stay over at Pearl’s, and catch the late train back on weeknights.

After a couple of wrong turns, Julia found the first place. What the advert had described as a charming cottage was, in fact, a tiny terrace house. The landlord was waiting outside. Rotund, and in his late fifties or early sixties, he was more of a yokel than the Surrey stockbroker type she’d expected.

‘Jeff,’ the man said and stuck his hand into hers.

‘Julia,’ she replied.

‘You’re the first to see it. If you like, you can help choose the other tenants.’

So far, so good.

Jeff wrenched open the rusted gate into a small front garden, overrun with weeds. Inside, the house was empty, except for a thick-pile beige carpet on the floor.

‘I’ve ordered new furniture,’ the landlord said once inside.

A sofa and coffee table may have helped to hide some of the stains or distracted from the thick dust on the skirting boards.

‘Did the last tenants wreck it?’ Julia asked.

‘Who?’

‘The previous tenants, it doesn’t look like they took care of the place.’

The man scowled. ‘My wife’s always been a stickler for housework,’ he said. ‘If it’s a little dusty, it’s because we moved out a couple of weeks ago and there’s been no chance to run a cloth over it.’

Julia eyed the sticky mug ring on the mantelpiece and caught a whiff of dog hair rising from the carpet.

‘What do you think?’ Jeff asked, after giving her a tour.

‘The bedroom’s a bit small,’ she said.

The second room on her list was in a similar Victorian terrace to the first. Two male PhD students, from Surrey University, were already living there. It annoyed Julia that she hoped at least one of them was good-looking and single. The first hope was wiped out as she entered the house, and she never got around to asking about the second.

Ewan, twenty-six and reading physics, showed her the room, which was large and had its own sink. Promising. And while the place couldn’t exactly be called clean, it wasn’t filthy, and the location was convenient.

Ewan sat her down in the kitchen and made her a cup of tea.

‘This is Simon,’ he said. ‘He’ll be your other housemate.’

Simon sat at the other end of the table to Julia, his face hidden behind some academic tome.

‘Hi,’ Julia said.

Simon lowered the book, peered over the top, but didn’t respond.

‘So, what do you do?’ Ewan asked.

‘I’m about to start as a …’ Simon distracted her by putting down his book, placing his elbows on the table, his head in his hands and devoting all his energy to glaring at her. ‘As a software developer at Morgan Boyd Consulting.’

Had she done something wrong? She looked directly at Simon and smiled. He continued to glare. Ewan appeared unaware of his housemate’s open intimidation.

‘We’re kind of quiet in the week, but go out on Friday and Saturday,’ he said.

Simon’s expression remained fixed and hostile. A mild panic ran through her. Was this a trap? Did these men lure young women in with the offer of a room, do away with them and stash their corpses under the floorboards? Perhaps her tea was drugged. Perhaps Simon kept his dead mother mummified in the basement. She’d seen Psycho.

Julia put down the mug. ‘You know, it’s lovely but … er … too far from the station.’

‘It’s a three-minute walk,’ Ewan said.

‘Thanks.’

Simon was still staring at her. Julia picked up her bag and ran out down the hall, towards the door.

‘Is it the mess? We’re thinking of getting a cleaner,’ Ewan called from the kitchen.

Julia slammed the door behind her and ran to the end of the road before turning back. She almost expected to see Simon racing from the house to hunt her down. The front door stayed shut. She walked around the corner and out of sight before stopping to catch her breath. As soon as her breathing had slowed down, she laughed out loud. Psycho – she was being ridiculous. People aren’t murdered in cosy commuter towns. Perhaps all Simon had wanted was to keep Ewan to himself. Perhaps he’d end up murdering Ewan in a fit of jealous rage. Again, Julia laughed. Her mother, Audrey, always told her she had an overactive imagination and it was possible that, for once, she was right.

Three more places were left on the list. One turned out to be more of a cupboard than a room, the other was next to an MOT servicing garage, open six days a week. By the time Julia headed towards the last potential room, she had scratched ‘clean’ and ‘near the station’ from her list. As long as there was no heavy machinery next door and it was free from homicidal maniacs, she’d take it.

Downs Avenue was a steep, winding road on the edge of town, further from the train station than was ideal. On one side of the road, houses of varying styles and sizes stood at the bottom of sharply sloped drives. On the other lay the open hillside of the Downs.

Julia had not seen them before, the low-rolling hills, covered with meadow flowers interrupted by clumps of trees, lusher and more inviting than the hills at home.

On reaching number 72, she thought she had made a mistake and rechecked the address. Downsview Villa, 72 Downs Avenue – it was the right place. The house was in a modern style, with a nod to Georgian, detached, double-fronted and set over three storeys. Far grander than anything she’d expected. Julia rang the bell and waited a moment before swathes of fabric floated across the frosted glass of the front door. A slender woman of medium height opened it. A classical beauty, with high rounded cheekbones and long curled eyelashes. Around Audrey’s age, Julia thought, fifty or so, but her mother would never dress like this. A printed silk scarf was wrapped around the woman’s head and fashioned into a turban and she wore a matching dress, long and flowing. Was she on the way to a fancy-dress party, or perhaps rehearsing for a play? Julia waited for her to speak, but the woman remained bolt upright at the door, one arm stretched across its frame.

‘Hi. I’m Julia. I’ve come about the room,’ she said, when it was clear the woman wasn’t going to speak first.

The woman’s spine relaxed a fraction and she looked Julia up and down for some moments before saying, ‘Julia? You don’t look like a Julia. My name is Genevieve.’

The retort, You don’t look like a Genevieve, would have been ill-applied. No one could look more like a Genevieve. Julia would have been very disappointed if she were named Mildred.

Unsure how to respond, Julia stayed silent, half expecting the woman to turn her away, but she said, ‘Come in,’ stepped back and flung her arm out to usher Julia inside 72 Downs Avenue.

Chapter 3

2017 – Central London

The Georgian square I’m standing in, the small green, the autumn leaves, all feel distant. Someone is screaming at me.

‘You dozy cow! Look what you’ve done.’

I stare transfixed at the photo link on my phone.

‘It’s all over him. He could be scarred for life.’

I recognise those hills and those beech trees on my screen.

Someone grabs my arm and yanks me backwards.

‘Are you on drugs or something? I said you’ve scalded my son.’

A woman wearing a puffer jacket thrusts her face into mine. I pull away and look down. It’s the toddler from earlier, his red coat stained and dripping with coffee.

‘I … I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘Sorry isn’t good enough.’

She still has hold of my arm.

‘I don’t think he’s hurt.’ It’s Paulo. He gently detaches me from the woman’s grip.

‘What – are you a doctor?’ she says.

Paulo kneels down to the boy. ‘Are you hurt, pal?’ he asks.

‘Wet,’ the boy says.

‘See, he’s just wet. No harm done, eh?’ Paulo says.

‘No thanks to her.’ She glowers at me. ‘Look – she doesn’t even care – high as a kite at eleven o’clock in the morning.’

‘Let me deal with this,’ Paulo says.

He picks up my coffee cup from the ground and pulls me onto the nearest bench. Some survival instinct impels me to place the phone face down on my lap. I sit there, shaking.

‘Bad news?’ Paulo asks.

He glances at the phone. I keep the screen downwards.

‘Yes. I mean no. It’s nothing.’

‘Anything I can do?’

‘Thank you. I’ll just sit for a moment.’

‘Sure.’ He looks concerned. ‘I’ll be over there if you need me.’ He points to his friend.

The mother’s still glaring at me, after he leaves. I think she’s going to come over, but the boy is pulling at her sleeve and pointing at a squirrel running up a tree and she turns away.

I flip the phone over in my lap and press on the link. It takes me to a news website.

Environmental Science students from the University of Surrey have discovered human remains while taking soil samples on the North Downs, just outside Guildford. Police have confirmed that the death is being treated as suspicious but refuse to speculate further.

No further information is being circulated at this time.

I knew this day would come. I always thought I’d face it with grim resolve and a rational, cool pragmatism. It feels like I’ve been hit by a train. My lungs won’t draw air, my limbs are weak and shaky.

I need to act normally. I’ve already been foolish. Paulo might remember this. Tactfully, he’s turned away from me and is talking to his friend. I have to pull myself together. I steady my hand, go to the phone settings and delete the message and browsing history.

Once I’ve managed to stop shaking and am able to breathe, I put the phone in my pocket and walk over to Paulo. He looks up as I approach.

‘Everything all right now?’ he asks.

‘Fine. Sorry about all the drama. Some family trouble, I over-reacted. It’s all good now.’

‘Great,’ he says. ‘See you back at the office.’

A light drizzle has started. Drops slide down my neck. I shiver and turn up my collar. The man I saw outside the Sensuous Bean slips into the nearest newsagent. I’m alert to him now. Is it a coincidence he arrived at the same time as the text? It doesn’t matter. I must act normally – whatever that is.

I have to calm down and think. The shock of the news, the picture of the Downs bathed in golden light, the shaded dells hinting at the darkness, the tightness in my gut – all this has stopped me from asking the most important question. Who sent the text?

Chapter 4

1994 – Guildford

Stepping past Genevieve and into Downsview Villa for the first time, Julia was struck by its sense of space. The entrance hall was double-heighted, stretching to the roof and opening up the whole house. A window spanning both floors flooded the room with light. It was as far from her friends’ poky dives in North London as Audrey’s was from the dog hair and coffee-mug rings of the charming cottage she’d viewed earlier.